Terms Of Entrapment
by ALittleLemonTea
Summary: Inspired by Opened the Wrong Tomb by Idiot Anonymous. In the mountains between Noxus and the Tempest Flats, there's a temple from whence no one returns. Stories of an ancient monster draw the attention of a certain young explorer, but Ezreal's curiosity may get him far more than he bargained for on this adventure. Vlad/Ez
1. Prologue

**AN**: This is the first fanfiction I've published in a very long time. Let me first say that the idea for this fic was originally Idiot Anonymous', special thank you to them for giving me permission to work around their idea. Make sure to take a peek at their stories for more Vlad/Ezreal goodness. Their story "Opened the Wrong Tomb" inspired me, and I wanted to expand on the some of the ideas they had. This story will, of course, deviate from their original concept, though I'll try to follow some of the guidelines of their story and may occasionally quote the dialogue they wrote. It'll definitely take a turn for the dark, but I'm keeping it at a T rating until further notice. Feel free to point out mistakes and typos- my writing is sometimes done while super tired.

I know that each city-state doesn't have it's own Institute of War canonically, but it made more sense to me to write it that way. At absolute risk of being repetitive, I think it makes sense for Noxian champions ought to be judged by Noxian summoners trained in Noxia to ensure that their values line up with the Noxian way, Demacians by Demacians, and so on. Having only a handful of emissaries in each city-state doesn't suggest as much power as the League having an embassy (or, rather, Institute of War) in each location, especially if the League is in place to manage conflicts that could potentially turn into _all out war._ That's all I have to say for myself about that.

This chapter is a ton of backstory. If you don't care about how Vlad ended up trapped in a catacomb and just want to get to the part where Ezreal meets him, you'll want to move on to chapter 1. Otherwise, happy reading!

* * *

Every twist and turn of the catacombs was familiar. The echoes of rats, bats, and spiders had been his music for many years. The beat of their tiny hearts was never distracting. The skitter and flap of clawed feet and membranous wings suggested the cautious shuffles of housemates who respected each other too much to disturb one another.

It was a place Vladimir could gladly call home. The trappings of comfort existed even in this place, he had staked his claim on it by adding something which no one would ever expect to find in a house of death: comfort. The cobbled floors were swept clean, the recesses in the walls cleared of dust. The underground mausoleums housed the belongings of a living creature. Seclusion wasn't so terrible, but unlike his master, Vladimir was never content to live in gruesome squalor. He loved beauty too much, Dmitri had always said. That was one of few faults Vlad was willing to accept in himself.

As profane as it was to make a place of death inviting, Vlad tried. Perhaps it was foolish to care so much about the appearance of a crumbling temple in the mountains, but every inch of it from the antechamber to the depths of the catacombs held a faded splendor that Vlad had tried to restore over time. It was a place where he had power, and Vlad once freely welcomed travelers into it. He couldn't rely on the disguise of an aging monk to lull his victims into a false sense of security like Dmitri did. The fascination with their surroundings was all that held them. Out of necessity they died fast, obscenely fast.

Killing travelers had never been enough for him. Possessed with an adventurous kind of bloodthirst, Vladimir had gone to Noxus to demand entry to the League of Legends from the local Institute of War. The Emissary of the League had permitted him into the Chamber of Reflection. What the summoners witnessed there disturbed them. Within even the most remorseless people there was often a spark of sympathy, an old wound or a hardship that had turned them into what they were. The vision granted to Vladimir revealed no such thing. The extravagant creature that had passed through the doors to the chamber was not a man, he was a monster wearing a beautiful skin. Vladimir had long ago passed from humanity to monstrosity with the same speed and tumult that had characterized his transition from youth to adulthood.

When the doors to the Chamber of Reflection flew open to bathe him in light at last, Vladimir could only stand in the center of the vaulted room, sickened and stunned at his solitude. The spectre of Dmitri left him feeling exposed, the way Dmitri always had in life. Dmitri always saw through him, those ancient eyes picked apart every pretense to find the dark core of his soul. Now the summoners had seen it too, and for the first time in many long years, Vladimir was afraid. Exposing his mind was not liberating, as he had claimed belligerently before the vision of Dmitri. When he stood all alone in that clammy room before the eyes of the summoners, it was daunting.

Before he could think about what he was doing, Vlad's feet were carrying him out of the Institute of War, past the beautiful sculptures he had admired calmly on his way in, through marble halls and into the dark streets of Noxus with the shouts of summoners and guards on his heels. They knew what a danger he was. Monsters were not admitted to the League. They were _enslaved to it_. Vladimir made a mad dash out of the city, leaving his pursuers behind at a speed greater than any normal human's pace. Animal terror propelled him towards the only place that had ever given him even a tentative feeling of safety, his former master's domain. There, he could be alone with his ghosts.

The makeshift beauty he had surrounded himself with was his refuge. The pilfered pieces of a world he could never be a part of gave him comfort. Once again, Vlad began admitting travelers to his dwelling. Although he quickly learned that he was not safe from summoners anymore, it invigorated him to fight and kill them. They gave him the resistance his more unsuspecting victims never could, travelers and wandering merchants never had quite so much fire in them. The summoners' incursions made him content. Putting down their attempts to capture him gave him the death and violence his black heart longed for.

Slowly but surely, he forgot the world outside of the very small one he occupied and cultivated. Vladimir grew so confident that he could utterly destroy anyone who wandered into his abode that he scarcely gave the kind of people who wandered into his territory any thought. He never noticed that travelers came less often to the temple because he didn't know about the frightful warnings and stories that hung around his home. He didn't care that most of his visitors were Noxian summoners intent on dragging him kicking and screaming into the League. When an attractive young woman came strutting into his dwelling with a crossbow on her arm, Vlad only roused himself for another meal.

Arrogance blinded him to the fact that Shauna Vayne had more than just the intent to kill him- she had the skills and the tools in abundance. The first silver bolt the night hunter put in his chest curdled his unholy blood, and the distraction of pain might have cost Vladimir his life had he been a more foolhardy man. Rather than fighting her, he evaded her and ultimately lost her, slipping away into the catacombs beneath the temple, tucked into the face of the mountain several feet down at the end an overgrown trail that only Vlad remembered.

From there he could not witness the flames Vayne committed his belongings to. Since she could not destroy him, she sought to destroy his sanctuary as thoroughly as she could, so that he might never be able to safely return to it. A beast with no den was easily picked off. At daybreak she left, ignorant of Vladimir's ability to function daytime hours, perhaps believing him dead in the daylight. He emerged to find only the burnt remains of his things smoking in the empty stone shell of the temple.

Vlad knew then that his life aboveground must end, and retreated into the catacombs after salvaging what he could from the charred remains of his possessions. For the very first time he discovered how alien the tunnels beneath the temple were to him. Dmitri had never bothered with them, Vlad had always assumed that this was because they were empty. He had never been more glad to find out that he was wrong, nor more intrigued. The temple, which had surely been beautiful once, had been effaced by years of harsh weather, but the catacombs were well-preserved.

This new environment surprised him at every turn. The crystals set in the walls could be illuminated by hemomancy, a fine misting of blood would keep them glowing for hours. Deeper in, even the chill of the mountain air lessened, and beyond wrought iron doors rusted shut he even found furniture. Vlad spent sleepless days and nights exploring the maze-like depths of his new home, and in time came to the vague understanding that the catacomb had once housed an entire cult of hemomancers. Vlad could only guess as to why they had left the safety of the underground- maybe they preferred the temple as their home. Vladimir certainly had. But where had they gone after that? The legacy of a hemomancer was in the blood that his or her apprentice absorbed, surely there ought to be students left. It was a mystery he knew he would never unravel with Dmitri so long gone. The knowledge of the magic was in his veins, but the history was lost.

Night after night he worked to restore the catacombs to a more welcoming state, uninterrupted by the usual attacks. Blood was hard to come by, though he could easily siphon from the wild creatures that roamed too near the catacomb. While vermin and low animals were his companions and minions, higher animals preferred to avoid him. To them he was a dangerous predator whose territory they didn't dare invade. A goat or a bear would constitute a lucky but unlikely catch; occasionally a brave fox or a starved lone wolf would come skulking after rats to eat only to wind up as meals themselves. There were even times when he had to suffer the indignity of _eating_. Moles and rabbits never produced enough blood to nourish him, so he would find himself disemboweling the little beasts, eating them raw to preserve the taste of blood in their flesh. Vlad hated eating. The meat would get lodged between his teeth, and the sensation of food in his belly made him feel uncomfortably full. The whole matter of it was something Vlad avoided whenever possible.

In time, and quite by accident, the summoners found him again. All it had taken was one curious adventurer noticing the path to the catacomb entrance. Vlad had killed the intruder without fanfare, so starved for human life essence that he abandoned all finesse. A steady trickle of humanity began to flow into his new domain, and Vladimir learned how to play with them, taking no chances. The search party that came to find the first fool he'd drained made good practice. He toyed with them for days, picking them off one by one without ever offering them hope of escape. Those humans that followed allowed him to perfect his technique.

Though he worried that the night hunter might return to finish what she started, she never did. Vlad didn't flaunt his presence, and so deep into the mountains a traveler might become lost, or freeze to death, or fall from a cliff. There was little to detail his existence, and he never left survivors. In place of the night hunter, more summoners came. With Vlad having killed enough of them, their invasions became more aggressive. The new wave of summoners was made up of competent mages who hexed him and had the potential to hurt him considerably, but always underestimated him for lack of understanding of his powers. Letting them think they'd bested him only to turn the tables on them was a favorite game of his.

Sometimes he let them run before killing them. The catacombs were his playground, and he watched the invaders for longer than they knew before descending upon them. Such was the case with the latest summoner, whom Vlad had already thoroughly tormented. The invading mage was nearly out of his wits with fear that Vladimir had been carefully cultivating with small scares for half an hour, leading his prey deep into the catacombs before showing himself. Now the chase was on, leading down twists and turns that Vladimir had been memorizing for years. He herded his victim to a dead end, where the rusted door of an underground mausoleum barred any further progress.

The mage turned on him with wild eyes, his hands raising to cast. Vlad was entirely unconcerned by this show, and closed the gap between himself and the summoner with a few long strides to swipe at him with such force that it threw him against the wall. The robed figure groaned and crumpled, nauseated by pain, blood pouring hot down his wounded face. A pair of polished boots stepped into the mage's line of sight. "You damned summoners." The voice that came from the monster was more mocking than menacing. "I can't count how many scores of you I've butchered. Does the Institute of War send you? Or do you hear that there's a monster that escaped recruitment and come looking to capture it and bring it back to play with?"

Silence. Vladimir sneered at the heap of fabric and gasping humanity in front of him. None of his victims had the decency to respond on the rare occasions that he spoke to them. He despised such rudeness. There was no way the hemomancer could know that the summoner's silence was significant of the focus needed to cast a powerful spell. Rookie mages had stopped coming to find the supposed vampire long ago, but the Institute of War couldn't forbid summoners from seeking out dangerous champions like Vladimir. Confidence, cockiness, and sometimes even skill were the hallmarks of the summoners who came to capture the beast, who had become a legend in his own way among the summoners. Few anticipated dying the way they did.

This summoner, however, had not only known that his death was possible, but likely. Now that it had become an inevitability, he knew that it was the least he could do to seal the fiend's power so that a future summoner could perhaps do the work he'd failed to. The spell he now silently wove through his body with a mental incantation was forbidden. It was necromancy to exchange a life for the purpose of creating an anti-magic trap. Normally it was done by sacrificing another person. Performing the sacrifice on oneself was surely no crime, and there was no point in obeying rules moments from death.

The scream of the rusted door to the mausoleum being wrenched open echoed the mage's fear, but not a word was spoken as Vladimir dragged him over the threshold. The hemomancer planned to drain the intruder slowly, since there was no one else with him. There was no reason he shouldn't savor killing his newest meal. Never did he think that he might be giving his victim time to weave the spell that would mean his undoing.

For hours he calmly siphoned the life from the summoner via the wounds his claws had made until the bleeding grew sluggish and the pulse grew faint. In what Vladimir knew to be the final moments of the summoner's life, the man began making a sound no other victim had ever made before him. The mage started to laugh. Weak as it was, the hemomancer's sensitive ears caught it, and for all his typical confidence it dawned on him suddenly that he had made a mistake. But what mistake had he made? Did the mage have an ace up his sleeve? What could he have missed?

The summoner lifted a heavy head to fix Vladimir with a dim gaze. In a mix of rage and panic, Vlad drew the last of the blood from him in a hurry, but on the mage's final breath the spell was cast. The blood suspended in the air by Vladimir's power crystallized into a jagged red obelisk that tore itself from his grip to plant itself firmly in the chest of the exsanguinated summoner. The body turned to a mound of salt and dust beneath it, the robe falling empty.

A rushing noise filled the room, crescendoed, and tapered into silence. The immense stone sat inert for a few peaceful seconds, casting the room in a faint crimson glow. Cautiously, Vlad approached it only to be thrown off his feet by the magical blast it gave off. The wall he hit was veined with violet light that spread rapidly outward, the colour disappearing almost as soon as it made itself known. When the stars cleared from his eyes, Vlad cast a glance around the room.

Outwardly, nothing had changed, but the hemomancer knew better than to take things at face value. Rising to his feet, he gave himself a cursory physical. Nothing hurt, and he had no visible injuries, but he made a mental note to examine himself more thoroughly if he could find nothing else that had changed in his environment. Nothing stopped him from exiting the room, and a walk through most of the catacombs revealed no physical difference. All that show for nothing?

Peeling away the layers of his clothing, Vlad checked himself for any sort of magical injury as best he could, but this search, too, proved fruitless. He wandered back to the room where the stone stood, intent on solving it's mystery. After a while of staring at it, at a loss for reason, Vladimir brought himself to touch the thing. Under his palm it was warm, almost pulsating, but when he lingered on it too long it turned so cold that it nearly felt like it was burning him.

Surely if it was formed from crystallized blood he could lift it, take hold and shatter it. With hands outstretched he channeled his power... only to discover that the familiar surge was missing. The blood in his body always rushed to the surface at his calling, but now it barely stirred beyond it's steady pulse. No matter how intently he focused he couldn't call forth that rush of power. Lancing a finger, he tried again to no effect. Vlad tried to draw from a rat, but he couldn't call it to him as he was used to doing with vermin.

If there was a worst case scenario, Vladimir was sure he was living it. Desperation saw him moving further and further from the surpressing stone to try and coax his power until he stood at the doors to the catacomb. Although he pushed with his normal amount of force, it didn't budge. His skin prickled with panic, the bristling of an animal whose entrapment has only just dawned on it. Vlad threw himself against the doors to no effect, he couldn't even rattle them. There was no one to hear him when he screamed his fury.


	2. Past Tense

**AN**: Despite the suspiciously specific denial of Vlad being a vampire, for all practical purposes he is. Without his hemomancy he can't draw blood magically to turn into the pure energy he survives on. He's got to bite and drink blood, so sorry, Riot! I fart in the general direction of your lore, he's a vampire until he gets his powers back! As always, please feel free to review with corrections. I _must_ have made some mistakes in there somewhere...

* * *

It wasn't every day that Ezreal felt like punching someone. Sure, there were times when he had to do worse- that was part of being in the League of Legends- but right now he wanted nothing more than to throw down his gloves and sock the crook who pawned the useless map of the southeastern mountain range off on him. All that talk of an ancient temple, a lost sect of sorcerers, and a horrid bloodsucking monster had reeled the prodigal explorer right in. He'd heard the stories of the monster in the mountain before, they came and went every few years. No matter how many times Ezreal swore that he'd investigate the happening, there was never enough information to go on.

The map was a windfall for him. Normally he would choose to forego a map- who needed them, anyway?- but in extreme climates they were a necessary evil. Getting lost in the mountains, even with abundant supplies and survival skills, usually meant death of the horrible frozen variety. The air was thin, the climate unforgiving, and vegetation and wildlife were often sparse. Ezreal was a survivalist, but not exactly a hunter. The map was everything he could have asked for, with trails and landmarks drawn in.

Why, he'd practically thrown his money at the lowlife back-alley salesman who'd been waving it in his face, _knowing_ that the famous prodigal explorer could never resist. Well, fat lot of good it'd done him! The map was either older than it looked, or completely fraudulent. More than half the trails marked down were either long gone, or had never existed at all. The landmarks were found to be much the same, and the few crooked signposts he'd come across were long erased by the wind and snow.

Ezreal's skills as a cartographer and navigator only extended so far. The best he could do was correct his map and press on to the next possible landmark. Grimacing, the young man glanced up at the sky. The clouds were thick and heavy, rendering the sky much darker than it should have been at four in the evening. The last of the late spring snow was blowing over Piltover. Apparently this was where the front had gone. The cold temperatures and thin air at the high altitude were bad enough, but for a storm to hit now of all times? Ezreal was sure his luck had never run out faster. It almost felt like punishment for having been such a complete gullible idiot.

Even with warm clothes and the supplies he'd brought, if a storm hit he'd have a devil of a time finding an appropriate place to make shelter. Setting up a camp wasn't worth much if he was exposed. Ezreal knew that he should have waited. If he were smart- and at the moment, he was sure he wasn't- he would have sat down and researched the area until summer rolled in, then he could have simply traipsed right up the mountain amid lovely forgiving weather and everything would have been _perfect._

But Ezreal sometimes made bad decisions. When he was lucky, they led him to great things. The magic-infused glove he wore was one such thing, it had changed his life, and he never regretted the unplanned, under-researched adventure that had led him to it. When Ezreal was unlucky, however, he wound up in life-or-death situations. The circumstances he was facing weren't yet so bad, but they looked certain to be getting there soon.

It was when he stopped to fill in the paths on his map that the first clumps of snow started falling. Clumps, not flakes. There would be no easing into it. Ezreal picked up his pace, hoping to find a spot to shelter from the storm in, but the vegetation was lacking and the mountainside was sheer, beaten by the weather into long, flat planes that didn't favor him with the current direction of the wind. If the map was correct, which was doubtful, he was moving along north of the Tempest Flats.

Ezreal had never explored this portion of the mountain range before. Like any other sane person, he took the Mogron Pass into the Shurima Desert and went from there. To think, simply moving east from the pass would take him into such alien territory... "I'm an idiot." The explorer mumbled to himself, the words dissolving in a cloud of steam. At least he hadn't run into any hostile mountain men or monsters, but considering the storm dumping dangerous amounts of snow on him, most other benefits were dubious at best. Ezreal would never let it be said that he didn't try to make the best of a bad situation, though.

The trek seemed to last for hours, though Ezreal knew that time seemed to extend beyond reasonable understandings of measurement when he was in a tight spot. What he was sure of was that he was going to be knee-deep in snow pretty soon, and that it was too dark to see much even with the star rod he was holding out in front of him. "_Bless Heimerdinger and those yordles at the Piltover academy for inventing these rods,_" Thought Ezreal, "_A torch might work in Shurima, but definitely not here._" To say that visibility was limited would have been a gross understatement. The downfall was a thick frozen curtain obscuring all but the largest objects. Ezreal couldn't mark his map anymore with any certainty, even his uncanny sense of direction couldn't overcome the conditions.

Things were looking bleak, but that was nothing new for the prodigal explorer. Ezreal reminded himself that he'd endured just as bad, if not worse, situations before. He knew he'd pull through, even though his legs _were_ getting tired, and the cold _was_ starting to creep into his clothes. Yet, as though to answer those thoughts, a great shape loomed up from the haze ahead. Just studying it's high, jagged angles and lopsided set got the explorer's heart pounding in his chest. Discovering something new always did. Not only was it shelter, it could very well have been what he'd set out looking for.

Ezreal nearly ran towards the structure, moving as fast as his legs would take him through the snow. On the snow-laden stairs he slipped, but the accident did nothing to hamper his enthusiasm, and he scrambled up the stairs on all fours to reach the landing. Not once before in his life had the explorer been so glad to get indoors. Ezreal had a special dislike for cold weather. During Snowdown season all he wanted to do was stay inside or travel south. When he was summoned to the Howling Abyss he was usually as surly as could be about it. At least this time, it'd been worthwhile.

The clear blue light of the star rod illuminated the dark passageway ahead. The first thing Ezreal did was look to the walls. The quickest way to learn about the purpose of an ancient structure was to check it's walls for pictoral carvings. By it's silhouette, Ezreal was sure this place was fairly old. Sure enough, there were carvings, but only faint ghosts of the images remained. The stone here was windswept and eroded, defaced too thoroughly by the elements to tell any story. With his gloved hand at the ready to cast a mystic shot at any real sign of threat, Ezreal continued down the hallways, noting the strange recesses chiseled into the floor every so often.

The further from the door he got, the more clear the carving on the walls became. While Ezreal was itching to take a closer look, something in particular put him on his guard: the scent of burnt wood. It was faint, but that didn't mean there was no reason for concern. That smell suggested that someone had been there recently, and there was nothing to say that whomever it was had left. With no way to know whether or not the potential other occupant of the building was friendly, archaeology would have to wait until the place was secure.

Yet what Ezreal discovered at the end of the weaving hallways of the temple came as a complete surprise to him. The smell was not, as he suspected, from a put-out campfire. It was the long-trapped scent of burnt furniture in the charred great hall. The explorer groaned aloud. Even the furniture could have had historical importance, and some fool had torched it completely. The fire couldn't have been too long ago, or the place would have been much more thoroughly aired out, but the ashes were strangely undisturbed.

Travelers were said to disappear in the temple in the mountains all the time. What else could this place have been? Yet the place looked like it had been virtually untouched ever since the fire. The only sign that anyone had even been through happened to be the footprints in the ash, though even those were old, covered up in some places by snow that blew in from the gaps in the ceiling. Maybe someone had burned the creature out. Ezreal knew he should follow the prints to make sure there was nothing nasty waiting to surprise him wherever they ended, but he sincerely didn't want to go back outside into the storm, and if the howling from the other end of the hall was actual wind and not some baleful monster, he was sure it led back out.

Sleeping would probably be impossible with that ominous howling going on, but all the better if he was awake. More time to set up camp, make sketches and charcoal rubbings, and take inventory of the recognizable furniture. It was going to be a long night.

**/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/**

Miraculously, sleep did come. Not a sane, decent amount of it, but any sleep was good sleep. Ezreal had slipped into his sleeping bag for just one minute, and before he could stop himself he was dozing off. He'd only slept for two hours according to his watch, but it was better than nothing. The storm continued to rage outside, if the thick snow still pouring through the holes in the ceiling was any indication. Reluctantly crawling out of the warm shelter of his sleeping bag to pull on his boots, Ezreal sat down on top of it and started to leaf through the rubbings, sketches, and notes he'd spent most of the night making.

What he'd gathered from the carvings in the wall was that the temple had belonged to a sect of hydrosophists, practitioners of water magic. They were depicted manipulating great arcs and orbs of water before awed and reverent masses who bowed down to them, and from what Ezreal could tell the magic was passed down from mentor to student directly, physically, by way of the water itself. Interestingly, the carvings were not in Ionian style. The gestures apparently needed to cast the magic looked similar to gestures he had seen before on the Fields of Justice. Syndra flung her dark sorcery in marginally the same way, but he had never witnessed her manipulating the elements.

Valoran had it's own mages, of course, but the general Valoran focus on hextech development and military operations had de-emphasized the heavy use of direct magic, especially dangerous elemental magic. Historically, mages had been destructive enough before the days of the League that most people were happy to see them either regulated by the League or relegated to Ionia to learn control. The mages residing in the temple were obviously not Ionian, meaning that they had either been wiped out in the early wars, or had left for Ionia like the rest.

However, there was an incongruity: the burnt furniture. On closer inspection of the salvagable things, he'd found the workmanship not only to be standard, but _contemporary._ Someone had been living here relatively recently, maybe within the last ten or fifteen years. New theories joined his original speculation that the place had been burned to drive out a monster. The mages might have resided in the temple up until the creature came. They might have burned their own sanctuary to smoke the beast out. Ezreal thought that someone might have come to wipe them out, but there were no human remains among the ash. "The Piltover Archaeological Society is gonna love this." Ezreal proclaimed proudly to himself as he carefully folded the papers into a portfolio. Coming across the half-marked map again, his optimism fizzled. "...If I ever make it out of here."

Ezreal bound the portfolio shut and slid it into his pack before beginning to pack up to follow the footprints in the ash as he meant to do earlier that night. He hadn't been attacked in the couple hours he'd spent sleeping, but the absence of evidence wasn't the evidence of absence when it came to danger. The prodigal explorer tied his rolled up sleeping bag to the pack, hitched it up on his back, and began to track the footsteps down the other end of the great hall. There were several sets, and the ash that clung to the boots of the adventurers before him gave him some insights into which way they'd headed. The back halls led into the partially collapsed living quarters of the mages or clergypeople who had resided in the temple. The wall carvings remained relatively consistent with the ones in the front hall. A search for human remains turned nothing up.

Most of the ashen footprints led through to the other side of the temple and back outside, where they disappeared under the snow. It was an honest act of willpower for Ezreal to step out of the stone shelter of the temple and into the storm again, but another figure in the haze lured him forward. An untrained eye might have mistaken it for an unusual rock formation, but to Ezreal it looked like some kind of shrine. Retrieving another star rod from the side pockets of his pack to light the way, Ezreal pulled up his scarf, pulled down his goggles, and wandered toward the structure.

Up close, it was much larger. What Ezreal had taken for a shrine he soon discovered to be a charnel house. A few rotted coffins, half-buried by snow, still laying at the porch of the building, held human skeletons, all stripped of any possessions. Ezreal found that strange. Graverobbers normally didn't take the clothing. More unusual still, the skeletons were entirely whole. The coffins were overwhelmingly simple, rough hewn wood sealed only with nails. Once the wood rotted away, scavengers were liable to come and carry off pieces of the body while it decomposed, bones and all. Something here was out of place.

Ezreal tried the door, but the knob- and probably the hinges- were rusted to uselessness. Trying to break it down only ended with a sore shoulder, the wood was either very solid or _very_ frozen. Determined to find a way in, Ezreal slogged through the snow to circle around the building in search of a window, but toward the back of the building a certain detail distracted him. There was a thicket of bushes behind the charnel house, but some of them had been obviously cut away with a sword to create a gap that hadn't grown closed. Frowning, Ezreal approached them. Nobody hacked away the local flora without a good reason. The ground beneath his feet began to incline downward as he moved along the path cut into the brambles. With the snow concealing the ground ahead, Ezreal wondered if he should go any further.

"What kind of thinking is that, Ez?" The explorer asked himself, voice muffled against his scarf. Talking to himself was a habit he'd picked up in years of traveling alone. He made pretty good company for himself. "You're an adventurer. Be daring. Be intrepid. Be a moron. Live dangerously!" Grinning at his own nonsense, he began to make his way forward. Caution still marked his descent along the incline. One hand remained on the rock face at all time, knee-deep snow kept his pace slow and steady. The wind along the sheer cliff face whipped his face and he found himself rubbing his goggles more often than usual, but it was all worthwhile when the path turned into the mountain itself and yielded a new discovery.

A small cavern was worn into the mountainside, still supported by three of four columns that still stood against all odds- though a swift kick probably would have toppled them. Ahead of him was a worn metal door. Ezreal tried it, expecting it to be rusted shut like the charnel house door, but found it surprisingly operable, barely touched by decay. The door's weight surprised him, the metal was thicker than he'd expected. From his experience, the heaviest doors protected tombs, treasure, or both. Ezreal's heart got to pounding all over again as he pulled the door wide enough to admit him.

With his first step inside, his star rod flickered. Ezreal lowered it to examine it, shook it like that might help. "That's weird..." Star rods normally never flickered. They ran on magic rather than electricity. The light returned in full when he held it up again, then promptly died altogether, plunging him into almost complete blackness. Ezreal swore and headed back outside, where the star rod returned to life instantly. The explorer looked from the door to the star rod quizzically. "Okay... so star rods don't work in there. Gotcha." While the discovery might have made anyone else nervous, Ezreal was more curious than ever. _Why_ wouldn't a hextech light source work in that place specifically?

Luckily, Ezreal always had a contingency plan. The rags he tore up to use as kindling for his campfires he carried specifically for making torches in a pinch. A little magic, a little loose wood, and he had a light source. In this case he didn't have any wood, but there was the metal star rod. Ezreal didn't know if it would melt, but it was worth a try. He wrapped the end of the rod in fabric from his pack and cast a simple fire spell on it to ignite it.

Once more, Ezreal stepped through the door. The star rod died, leaving the passageway bathed in the amber light of the fire. The path ahead led down a flight of steps, ever deeper into the mountain. Out of habit, Ezreal looked to the walls. Sure enough, more carvings along the stairwell. He headed down to investigate them only to find that they told a very different story from the ones above in the temple. The stone was unweathered, almost pristine, preserving a gruesome tale in sharp relief.

The mages he had originally thought to be hydrosophists were depicted slitting the throats of the awed people who worshipped them in the carvings of the temple. The rivers shown on the temple walls were not water but blood, all of it flowing from the bodies of hundreds of sacrifices. The mages drew from it, forming their globes and arcs, the shapes of which didn't seem as playful as they did when Ezreal thought they were made of water. Ezreal continued downward, unable and unwilling to tear himself away from the images. The blood mages appeared to have turned on each other, tearing each other apart until one great, indistinct figure rose up above all others, who fell to their knees in its shadow.

As much as Ezreal would have liked to read on, tripping and falling down the stairs was not conductive to story time. The tumble went on for much longer than Ezreal would have liked, no matter how he tried to stop himself the momentum carried him all the way to the bottom of the steps. His torch clattered down next to him and skidded across the cobblestone floor a few feet. Another sound followed it, hollow and rhythmic- the object he'd tripped on. Ezreal was still gathering himself off the floor when the thing hit the landing and shattered into pieces.

Clutching the side of his aching head where he'd struck it on a step, Ezreal reached out with his other hand to pick up one of the shards dashed across the floor next to him. In the low light he couldn't tell what it was. He raised it into the torchlight and then immediately dropped it. It was a molar. The thing he'd tripped over was a _human skull_. Looking ahead, he noticed the long recesses in the walls and immediately understood that he'd descended into a crypt of some kind. No wonder the door had been so heavy.

His hand came away red when he pulled it away from his head to check for blood. "Damn it." Ezreal groaned. His backpack had broken the fall a little, but the damage was done. Here would be a good place to stop and tend the wound. Using his bloodied hand to support himself, Ezreal stood up to grab the torch. Suddenly he found the amber light of the fire ahead joined by a soft crimson glow next to him. One of the odd crystals mounted in the wall had begun to glow where his hand had touched it. Curiously, he put out his other hand towards the crystal in the opposite wall, but it didn't respond to his touch. The connection in his mind was instant, but unwilling. Ezreal smeared the crystal in the blood on his other hand and watched it flicker to life.

"Ugh, that's disgusting!" Exclaimed the adventurer, apalled. On the other hand, though, if the crystals remained illuminated for long they'd be a good way to find his way out... even if the means of lighting them up were vile. On a normal day he wouldn't let himself bleed, but this was already far from a normal day. Ezreal retrieved the torch and continued on his way, stopping occasionally to illuminate another crystal with his blood.

The crypt proved to be a full catacomb, complete with winding, confusing hallways and underground mausoleums marked with a language Ezreal couldn't recognize. He found it odd that for all the holes worn into the walls for bodies, there were barely any remains, let alone coffins. More unusual still, there were no animals. No bats had made their way in, and although Ezreal noticed rat droppings, there were no actual rats to be found. The only living residents of the place seemed to be spiders, though he could only guess at what they ate so far beneath the earth.

Eeriest of all was the growing feeling of being watched. The further Ezreal went in, the stronger it became. He found himself looking over his shoulder nervously. The prodigal explorer was not one to spook easily. Ezreal had gone through dozens of tombs without so much as a prickle on the back of his neck, but this was something else entirely. He checked his glove to see if it had sustained any damage. No worse for wear, except when he tried to summon energy into it, nothing happened. First the star rod, then his glove? Suddenly he wondered if it was better to turn back.

No, his nerves were getting to him. That was what he told himself, that he couldn't cast because he couldn't focus. Ezreal immediately felt stupid for being so cowardly, it wasn't like him at all. Taking a moment to steel himself, the explorer pushed onward. The blood trickling from his temple was beginning to dry into a sticky film on the left side of his face, his hand was already dry. Knowing that he clotted quickly was some kind of comfort, at least he wouldn't be walking around with a bloody head wound the whole way.

Ezreal leaped back when something crunched beneath his foot. Looking down, he discovered it to be a small skeleton, probably a rat. Not far ahead he spotted another, and a few more were piled up by the wall beyond that one. Now he followed the trail of animal bones, no longer bothering to try and illuminate the crystals behind him. As he progressed, the bones became more numerous, and then, to Ezreal's disturbance, he began to find corpses rather than just bones. Bat corpses, rat corpses, mice and rabbits, some with fur and meat still left behind. They were getting fresher.

The trail of tiny bodies led up to a mausoleum that lay open to disclose a red glow from inside. Ezreal hung back at the edge of the light. The feeling of being watched was stronger than ever; even though there was nothing but darkness behind him it wasn't a comforting darkness at all. Turning back no longer felt like an option. Better forward into the light than back into that threatening shadow. He advanced into the mausoleum.

If it weren't for the enormous crystal in the middle of the room glowing the colour of blood, Ezreal would have noticed the little mountains of rodent corpses strewn in the corners, the vaulted ceiling, the beautiful etching in the stone- but the crystal was all he saw. Transfixed by the sight, he moved toward it until he stood only a couple feet away from it, never daring to put out his hand and touch it.

"Bloodstone..." He whispered in awe. Ezreal had only seen bloodstone once before, and it was in Taric's collection. When he'd shown an interest in it, the gem knight had readily explained that bloodstone was both powerful and dangerous. Large chunks of it contained magic that could be used to heal mortal wounds and cure terminal illnesses, but the price for creating it was steep. Bloodstone was formed by some of the blackest arts: blood magic and necromancy. Using it's magic would deplete it of it's power, but long exposure to undepleted bloodstone was corruptive. For all it's healing potential, it was evil.

Never in his life had Ezreal seen so much of it in one place. Taric would have been beside himself. The explorer's eyes moved from the jagged pinnacle of the stone to it's base. The fabric pinned beneath it caught his eye. For all the moth holes in the faded material, it still seemed familiar. Ezreal crouched and touched the hem of it tentatively, running his finger along the silver embroidery. Green eyes grew wide as he recognized the pattern. "_Oh no..._" Ezreal thought, his stomach sinking, "_This is a summoner's robe._"

A new voice cut abruptly into the tense silence of the room. "Do you know something about this stone, dear lady?" Startled, Ezreal dropped his torch and scrambled to his feet, turning to face the source of the sound and aiming his glove for a mystic shot. The thing now standing in front of him was hideous. Chalk white skin was stretched tightly over a deathly skinny body swimming in fine black clothes apparently too large for it. The taut flesh on the being's bald head gave it a skeletal countenance, from which two pure red eyes glowed covetously. It's smile- if it could be called a smile at all- showed off a predator's elongated eyeteeth.

The monster rumored to kill travelers in the mountains now stood in front of Ezreal, staring him down, possibly sizing him up. Worse yet, it _laughed_ at him. "Oh, my darling, unless you mean to punch me to death, you can stop pointing that thing at me. Whatever you're planning to do with it won't work. No magic does in this place." The monster's voice was light and lilting, completely incongruous with it appearance. Masculine, but still slightly higher than Ezreal's own. The creature began to pace in front of him, stalking from one end of the room to the other. The explorer's eyes never left it. "Now, I will ask you again, young lady, do you know anything about this stone?"

Distressed and bewildered, all Ezreal managed to blurt out was "I'm not a girl." If the monster had eyebrows, they would have moved up. The change in expression was all that was there to suggest it. Ezreal didn't lower his arm.

"Indeed you aren't, but that doesn't answer my question. _Do you know anything about this stone?_" Somehow it was scarier when the monster stopped pacing. It looked like it was about to strike.

"Yeah, I do. Why?"

"No one else seems to. If you aren't lying to me, your knowledge makes you unique." One impossibly shiny black boot edged forward. Ezreal tensed, bracing his body for the recoil of the magical pulse he expected to come from his glove, but nothing of the sort happened. Exactly like the monster had said, it didn't work. The vicious grin on that skull-like face widened terrifyingly. "Now, now, there's no need for that. Where are my manners? Allow me to introduce myself: My name is Vladimir. I invite you to stay here as my guest in the days to come."

"I'm not-" Ezreal began to protest only to have his words choked off by sudden pain in his throat. Vladimir was on him before he could have ever prepared himself, sinking sharp fangs into his neck. Ezreal tried to scream, but no sound escaped. Blackness.

* * *

Don't worry, Vlad won't be stuck in his nosferatu skin forever.


	3. Terms of Hospitality

**AN**: Good grief. Sorry this took so long. This was supposed to be published yesterday. All corrections to previous chapters will now be made. As you'll soon be able to tell, I'm _way_ more comfortable writing Vlad than Ezreal. Whoops. Also, I don't know if Ezreal's eyes are canonically blue or green. In his original splash art they appear green, but Debonair Ezreal's splash makes them blue. I'm going with green for now. Thank you to my reviewers, every bit of encouragement helps me continue on with enthusiasm!

* * *

Rest had done the both of them good. Vladimir couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so much like himself. Nothing else he knew could compare to fresh, young blood, whether it was simply watching it flow from the body of a youth or drinking it in. The hemomancer smiled. The intoxicating first kills of his boyhood had contributed to a certain proclivity for the blood of young men. Ah, but how difficult it was to believe that the creature sleeping before him was a young man!

Ezreal lay pale and fitful on the flat marble lid of a sarcophagus. For his own amusement, of which he had so very little, Vlad had tried to arrange the boy to look like one of the recently deceased on show. Even in sleep the explorer was defiant, twitching and thrashing in the grips of a nightmare that Vladimir liked to think was even worse than the incident that had plunged him into unconsciousness.

The hemomancer had carefully cleaned his new guest of blood while he could. He considered it the polite thing to do, and maybe the boy would be more at ease with him if he was made to understand that Vlad meant no real harm yet. Good manners were beneficial to everyone, though there was a chance that Vladimir had enjoyed extending his hospitality to the unwitting and unwilling adventurer a little more than Ezreal had enjoyed recieving it. Licking the blood from the blond's smooth skin had been gratifying. Sipping slowly from the wound he'd bitten into Ezreal's throat as it clotted intoxicated Vlad with temptation. He wanted to kill again, as he killed every other trespasser.

Titanic amounts of self-restraint were all that had ensured the continuation of the boy's life. No one else had been spared, for as far as he could remember, no one else had even spoken so many words at a time to Vladimir as Ezreal. Dizzy with the vitality of a fresh meal, the hemomancer had carried his victim into a neighboring mausoleum, where he slipped into a boozy sort of sleep with Ezreal still clutched in his arms. Exhaustion and bloodloss must have conspired to keep the blond out cold, so Vlad was afforded the rare pleasure of waking up next to a warm and pliant body.

The pleasure was dampened some by rising hunger that he knew he had to resist. Comfort overrode his disappointment. Vladimir's body fit into his clothes again, his hair had regrown healthily in a matter of hours (though it remained unruly as ever it had been), and his skin was supple. The chill of starvation had retreated from his insides for the present time. With his own bodily comfort acknowledged, Vladimir had promptly seen to the comfort of his young guest.

Now he stood over the boy amid the scattered contents of the pack he'd been carrying. Those objects were interesting on their own, but more interesting still was this being he'd welcomed into his home. Highly tactile by nature, Vlad had been very keen to investigate by touch. The scarf he'd bitten through was removed and thrown aside, the goggles on the boy's head likewise discarded in the interest of examining the head wound Ezreal had been sporting. It was barely a concern, looking worse for bloodiness than it really was. Head wounds always bled the worst, Vlad knew from experience. The hemomancer delighted in putting his fingers through the portion of Ezreal's golden hair dyed red with blood from the injury.

Likewise, he took satisfaction in stroking his knuckles over the boy's face, finding it smooth of any hint of stubble from jaw to pointed chin. "_Too young to be raiding tombs,_" Thought Vlad, smiling ruefully at the audacity of youth. His fingers lingered on the steady flutter of the pulse in Ezreal's neck, carefully treated with the bandages from the explorer's own supplies. As though responding to his curiosity the pulse quickened reassuringly, and Ezreal stirred in his sleep.

Not for the first time, Vlad sought out and found an adam's apple, as if to remind himself that the person on the slab in front of him was indeed male- not that it lessened his attraction any. Beauty was beauty, and Vladimir couldn't help but feel a little affection for all his victims. Blood was deeply intimate. The sweetness lingered even after his prey was no more, but it was the blood he loved when they were gone. Sparing this boy felt hazardous. He would have to be careful to remind himself that he was keeping his guest alive for practical reasons, and once those reasons were exhausted he could kill the pretty young thing with relish.

From Ezreal's neck Vlad's hand traveled down his chest, palm down, to rise and fall with the young man's breathing. Under layers of clothing Vlad could still feel the pounding of a frightened heart. The nightmare grew intense and set the boy to gasping. Vlad grinned at the distress he saw on that lovely face. No peace, even in sleep. "Poor pretty boy."

Ezreal slipped into a new fit of thrashing that proved violent enough to send him toppling off the slab before Vlad could catch him, hitting the ground with a strangled cry. The hemomancer made no effort to pick him up. Best to let the lad regain his senses. All he did was watch as green eyes cracked open and darted around the room frantically, skimming over him three times before they focused on him. With another cry the boy twisted until he could get onto all fours and then onto his feet again, but the sudden headrush Vladimir knew he would be having nearly sent him sprawling. Rather than risk another accidental injury, Vlad reached out and caught his guest.

"Careful, pretty boy. You aren't in the best of health right now." No matter how earnest the warning, Ezreal still struggled and pushed him away.

"Get away from me!" The voice that came out of the blond was still clear and forceful even with the remnants of drowsiness still clinging to it. By way of obeying the demand, Vlad made no move to catch the boy when he tripped over his own glove where it lay on the floor and sprawled onto his back. Said glove was hastily shoved onto a hand that was far too small for it and once more pointed at him. Vlad had to admit that the young man cut a very romantic figure, kneeling on the floor with a scowl on his face and a threatening fist outstretched. "Who are you?"

The hemomancer supressed laughter. Blood made all the difference in his appearance that he was irrecognizable from before. "Have you forgotten my name already, pretty boy? Tsk tsk tsk. How very rude. I introduced myself to you only hours ago. Vladimir is my name. Tell me, pretty boy-"

"I have a name." The explorer interjected with such vehemence that Vlad lost the fight with a short bout of laughter. A gracious, though mockingly exaggerated, gesture invited the introduction. The glove was lowered cautiously. "It's Ezreal."

Before Ezreal could speak on, Vlad continued. "Ezreal, then, a pretty name for a pretty boy." He had to clench his teeth to kill the laughter that welled up when the boy grimaced. "Tell me, Ezreal, do you remember what happened before you woke up here?" The blank stare he received initially told him no, but slow comprehension bled through into the green gaze fixed on him.

"You... you attacked me. That was you. But you don't look..." The hesitation that followed was filled with apprehension that clouded Ezreal's expression.

"Ugly?" Vladimir offered helpfully, cheerfully even. Vain though he could be, the hemomancer had no delusions about his appearance when he was starved. "I know. Your blood affected quite a change in me. You're very healthy, you know."

"_You drank my blood?_" Ezreal got to his feet again, slowly this time. His posture drew up with his outrage, which only served to make him look endearing to his host. Nonetheless, it made Vladimir impatient.

"Come now, boy, you knew there was a 'bloodsucking monster' living in the temple. It was right there in your notes." A clawed hand gestured at the sundry things scattered across the floor, the contents of Ezreal's portfolio and unfolded and spread out among them. "Wipe that look of disgust off your face, I'm sure it doesn't belong there." Just like that, Vlad watched as the lad's fury ebbed back. Grudging understanding took it's place. If things kept on like this, they'd get along just fine.

"Where's that bloodstone? Why'd you take out all my stuff? Why doesn't my glove work? Are you a-" Vlad held up a hand to stop the outpouring of questions. Too much, too soon.

"One thing at a time, Ezreal. Why don't you have a seat?" He gestured to the sarcophagus Ezreal had lain on and turned to pick around in the explorer's belongings for some of the food he'd found at the bottom of the pack. Ezreal didn't sit down. Vlad could feel eyes on his back the whole time. A flat, unlabeled can seemed enough like food to him to suffice, and he turned to offer it to Ezreal. The blond glanced from Vladimir's face to the can suspiciously, going back and forth a few times. The hemomancer offered an amiable smile, which seemed to convince Ezreal that his intentions were good. The boy took the can and even sat down on the sarcophagus.

The smell that issued forth when Ezreal pulled the tab on the can was unexpectedly pungent and fishy. Vlad had never smelled canned sardines before, and now he held his nose against the reek. Ezreal seemed not to notice until the hemomancer moved to snatch the can from him. Instinctively Ezreal turned away to keep it out of reach, already stuffing one of the morsels into his mouth. With a snarl, Vlad tried to swipe the can again, but his guest was undaunted. "Give those loathsome-smelling things to me!" He finally snapped.

"No." Ezreal replied around a mouthful. "I'm hungry. If you don't like the smell you can leave the room." It became very suddenly apparent to Vladimir that he was unfit to entertain guests after so many long years alone, as his temper ran out precisely there.

"_Petulant boy!_" The hemomancer roared, the domed ceiling of the mausoleum catching his voice and amplifying it to a punishing volume. Ezreal fumbled the can and set it down, scooting backwards off the sarcophagus to get away from the man now baring vicious fangs at him. "Is this how you speak to your host? You are lucky to be _alive_ right now, you ungrateful brat! If you wish to stay that way you will mind your manners!" Seeming to comprehend that there was very little he could do to deflect Vlad if he decided to attack, Ezreal raised his hands in front of him pacifically, palms out.

"I'm sorry." Any attitude left over in Ezreal's voice dropped away with the last reverberations of Vladimir's shout still echoing along stone walls. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been so rude to you." Going by his posture, the young man wasn't entirely cowed by the outburst, but the body language was sufficiently submissive for Vlad. The hemomancer straightened his back, having arched forward in the process of snarling at his guest, and composed himself. The friendly smile from before returned, as though it had never happened.

"Where indeed are my manners?" Chirped Vlad. Ezreal stared at him in confusion, clearly thrown off by this rapid change in demeanor. Vlad crossed his hands at the small of his back, attempting to convey that there would be no attack, though he drew himself up to stand head and shoulders over the blond (not a difficult thing to do) to remind him who was boss. That Ezreal might not understand these physical cues the same way he did never even occurred to Vlad. "That's certainly no way to treat an honored guest, especially when I owe you dinner." A chuckle. "Please, eat your... fish. I will be outside the door, as the smell is highly offensive to me. Please call for me when you are finished. We can see about answering some of our respective questions afterwards, hm?"

With that, Vlad turned and stepped carefully around Ezreal's things to take up a post at the doorway. He kept his back to the boy the entire time, not wanting to see what reaction his return to geniality had provoked. Neither was he particularly interested in watching Ezreal eat the noxious-smelling fish, the odor of which made his stomach roll even with the distance he put between them. The thought of an attack from the rear hardly concerned him, he would hear an approach before he even saw one. So Vladimir waited, listening to the smacking of the boy's lips as he ate, to the loud gulping of what Vlad assumed to be water from a canteen. He frowned. The boy really needed table manners.

When all other sounds behind him stopped, Vlad found himself anxious to be called again. It had been so long since he'd spoken with anyone, and even the tense interactions he'd shared with this explorer left him craving further conversation. An uncomfortably long time passed before Ezreal called for him. "Excuse me, Vladimir?"

"_Yeeees?_" The lilt in his voice was unintentional, but he truly was pleased to be addressed after that long silence. He turned and re-entered the room, finding his young companion now sitting on the floor among the papers Vlad had pulled out of his portfolio. The can had been left on the sarcophagus lid, still stinking, but far less so without the actual fish inside. "Did you enjoy your dinner, pretty boy?"

"Vladimir, please stop calling me that. I don't call you by what I think of when I look at you."

"What _do_ you think of when you look at me?" Vlad purred, laughing when Ezreal made a sour face at him. "Don't be so serious, Ezreal! You are my guest! I want you to enjoy my hospitality. You will, after all, be staying for a while." This only served to distress the explorer further.

"Wait, what? What do you mean? Are you saying that you're not gonna let me go once I've told you what you want to know?" Ezreal leaned towards him slightly, green eyes endearingly pleading. He probably didn't even know how adorable he was when he was upset. The lad was probably quite the devil with the ladies back home, wherever home was for Ezreal. Vlad stroked his chin in consideration of the question.

"That depends on whether or not what I want to know is what I want to hear." He watched the boy's face fall and the tension slip out of his shoulders, knowing that this change was not significant of resignation. Vladimir had meant what he said. If the answers he got were satisfactory, he would give Ezreal freedom from this place by death. If not, well, perhaps the outcome would be the same...

"So... what do you want to know?"

"Oh, how very polite of you to allow me to ask a question first when you surely have so many more." The hemomancer moved to lean on the nearest wall, facing Ezreal. Deeper into the catacomb there was real furniture, but he was not prepared to take his guest into his rooms yet. The so-called bloodstone was just a ways down the hall. "But please, I insist, you first."

"Alright..." Ezreal pursed his lips, looking away from the crimson eyes watching him to focus on his charcoal rubbings as he picked the more important questions of the lot. "First of all, my glove doesn't work in here, and neither did my star rod- that torch you saw me carrying. Both operate on magic. Do you know why that is?"

"Oh, yes. No magic works in here. It's all thanks to that bloodstone, as you called it, or so I believe. All magic worked perfectly fine in here before it, anyway."

"Didn't you make that thing? Why would you make a magic-supressing stone?"

"I didn't make it, for why indeed would I supress my own power? I curse the summoner who used his last breath to create that stone every time I wake. Because of him, I am trapped in this tomb and unable to help myself by any means. That is why it's such a happy thing that you have come, Ezreal. Why, I could not have envisioned a more perfect visitor if I tried." Vlad gestured over Ezreal and all of the items scattered across the floor. "Brains and beauty. You are a welcome guest."

Ezreal made another face, seeming significantly less comfortable after being flattered, but pressed on determinedly. "What do you mean? A summoner made that stone? Why?"

"Ah, that is such a long and... dreadfully boring tale." Vlad rolled his eyes in exasperation. "To make the long story short, the League of Legends has been trying to forcibly recruit me for some time. That summoner was one of many who came to attempt to subdue me and bring me back to the Noxian Institute of War. As I was killing him, he laughed at me, and I discovered too late that he had been doing some sort of spell on himself to lock me in here. Perhaps he was hoping hunters would come in to finish me, or maybe that some other summoner would come in with mercenaries to drag me outside and take me to the Institute."

"So you've been trapped in here for... how long?"

"I don't know. Years. Maybe decades. Measuring time grows challenging when you live underground." That particular question was dismissed with a negligent handwave. "Let us move on to other things. Those rubbings in your portfolio and your journal were very interesting to me. I have yet to meet a traveler who was also an archaeologist in my time here. Your belief that the hemomancers were hydrosophists was deliciously naive. More interesting to me than that is the fact that you knew what that stone was. Bloodstone, I heard you say. What do you know of bloodstone?"

"Not much." Ezreal responded cautiously, perhaps remembering what Vladimir had said about getting answers he wanted to hear. "Only some vague things that were explained to me by someone more experienced in magic and geology... but what I do know I have on pretty good authority. It's a type of gem, I think, with powerful magical properties. It can only be created by forbidden magic, like necromancy or-"

"Hemomancy." Vladimir cut in, believing himself quite helpful in doing so. Ezreal nodded.

"Blood magic. I'm guessing that's the correct word for it. Hemomancy." The boy's green eyes swept over the papers in front of him again, obviously recognizing the magic depicted on the walls for what it was. It was almost completely certain that the boy had seen the other carvings on the wall on the way in. Vlad planned to question him about his deductions on the hemomancer cult in the days to come, once Ezreal was able to take time and examine the carvings and murals everywhere throughout the tomb. Too many years had passed since Vladimir had made contact with the outside world to drink in it's knowledge. Even this boy archaeologist might know more about what had happened here, even conjecturally.

"Anyway, the high level of magic experience needed to form bloodstone, and the kind of sacrifice that goes into making it gives it power." Ezreal continued. "It takes a human sacrifice to form, and there was passing mention of it forming 'naturally' in places where a lot of people were killed by any kind of dark magic. Supposedly, bloodstone can heal any wound or cure any disease with the magic contained in it, since it derives from living human beings. Taric, I mean, the geologist, also said that it could be used in alchemy to make an elixir of eternal life."

Vlad shut his eyes and murmured "The blood is the life." His magic depended on life, which probably meant that the mage had sealed it into the stone along with his life. That didn't explain the anti-magic zone, though. Ezreal looked up at him curiously.

"What?"

"Nothing. Please, continue. You have my full attention."

The blond made another adorably distrustful face- he was full of those, Vlad was finding- and went on talking. "But unless it's used in alchemy, the magic inside it gets depleted when it's used. Even a large bloodstone might only be used to heal one person of a terminal illness or a mortal wound. In spite of it's healing powers, the stone is evil and tainted because of the magic used to make it. Who knows what kind of darkness it might leave in someone healed by it?"

"I find that to be a bit dramatic." Vladimir grinned and stood up straight, abandoning the wall he was leaning on to pace before his guest's intent gaze. "Bloodstone sounds like a miracle. Surely a little evil is a small price to pay to save lives."

Ezreal pursed the corners of his lips and wrinkled his nose. "Of course you'd think so. You're a vampire." Disdain was quickly replaced with masked confusion when Vlad laughed at the assumption.

"Is that what you think, Ezreal?"

"Well... yeah. You have to be a vampire. You have fangs and pale skin, and you drink blood to become younger and healthier. That's pretty consistent with the description of a vampire. What else could you be?"

"Do you like riddles, pretty boy?" The hemomancer's feet stopped moving, and he turned on the spot to face Ezreal fully. The proverbial cogs were turning in the lad's head, he could see it in Ezreal's expression. "It's not a trick question, Ezreal."

"Yeah, kind of." Ezreal finally said. "Why, are we gonna play a guessing game?"

"Why, _yes!_" Vlad responded, his tone dripping in sarcastic joy. "So riddle me this, pretty boy, and answer quickly, or I'll assume you're stupid and know nothing..." Ezreal's face lit up, his mind obviously ready top meet the challenge with defiant determination. The quick intelligence in the boy's features inspired a certain amount of pleasure and admiration in Vladimir's heart. "...what is a man with the thoughts of a beast?"

"A killer."

"Mm, an interesting answer. What, then, is a beast with the thoughts of a man?"

"A tragedy."

"So what is a beast with the _instinct_, that is, the drive and sense of a man?"

"Prey."

"And what does that make a man with the instinct of a beast?"

"A monster."

Amused to the point of delight by the bright boy's self-righteousness, Vlad clapped his hands together, his face nearly splitting with a grin that made Ezreal look uneasy. "Ha! Novel thoughts, all of them. One last question. What is neither monster nor man nor beast?" For this question, Ezreal had no answer except silence. The game was over, but Vlad was not left unsatisfied. "So the beasts are innocent until they are driven by the wickedness of men and become monsters. What does that say of you and your persistent humanity, little one?"

Here, Ezreal finally frowned, obviously disliking the implications made. "Whatever you are now, you were a man once."

"Yes, I was a man, and before that I was a boy like you." He was annoyed, but he didn't let it show in his expression. "The difference is that I became more than a man, whereas you will always be a naive, self-righteous boy."

"The _difference_ is that I know right from wrong, and you ended up as a monster because you didn't." Ezreal riposted too quickly for his liking, sparking Vladimir's temper once more, though not as violently as before. This fresh disrespect only provoked a baring of fangs.

"I am a hemomancer, boy." Vlad snarled through his teeth, softly but with undeniable threat. Ezreal recoiled before him. "I have lived since before you were born, and I will continue to live once you are dust. I have power over life and death, over the very blood that runs through each and every living thing. You can never boast the same. You could never stand to wield such a wealth of power, it would be wasted on you. I am more than you will ever be."

"But you aren't in control of that power right now, are you." The statement Ezreal dared to reply with shocked him with it's audacity. It had not been a question. Vlad drew himself up, inhaling deeply and holding his breath momentarily to keep himself from shouting.

"_Apologize._" The whisper sparked fear in Ezreal's eyes, more terrible than if he had bellowed. Now Vladimir saw the submission he sought during every outburst.

"I'm sorry. That was rude." If the explorer was getting tired of apologizing, he never dared to show it.

"Yes, it was rude." Once more Vladimir was the picture of serenity, though in his red eyes a hint of madness still flickered. "We will need to work on your manners while you are here, Ezreal, so that you might leave a better behaved person. There are rules, you see, when you are under another person's roof, and mine are... stricter than most. You will learn. We will lay out ground rules."

"How long... how long can I expect to be here?" Ezreal stood up slowly, without intent to run but still with extreme caution. Vladimir only gave him a strange look that he could only hope wasn't significant of hunger.

"You'll stay here until I say you can go. Now, we have gotten sidetracked, haven't we, pretty boy?" Although Ezreal nodded, Vlad didn't wait for a response anyway. "Why don't you sit down again? I would like you to explain to me why the bloodstone is making it impossible to do magic."

Unwilling to risk another outburst, Ezreal sat down on the sarcophagus. "Honestly? I don't know. I don't exactly know how that works. If it was created specifically to bind your power, I can't imagine why it'd make a whole antimagic zone."

"Try." Vlad commanded. "Speculate. You seem clever enough."

Ezreal shifted uncomfortably while he considered it, then began to think aloud. "Well, I was told that bloodstone forms in places where people have been killed by magic, and there was a cult of hemomancers living here, according to the walls. On the way down the stairs I saw the carvings that showed them using the blood from the sliced throats of hundreds of people for their magic." The images were recounted with another bout of uncomfortable fidgeting. "My best guess is that bloodstone forms by sucking up the dark energy in places like this, almost like a living thing, like a magic parasite. There's so much magic left over here that it might just be slurping up whatever it can get. Don't quote me on that, I'm not sure. It's speculation, like you asked for."

Vlad pressed the knuckle of his index finger to his pursed mouth, completely ready to accept this speculative explanation, but now more concerned with how to free his power with this in mind. Certainly there was no way he could consecrate this place. No priest of any faith would help him, and whatever evil was here was probably so deeply rooted that it would never be purged. "Did your geologist friend say anything about how to destroy or deactivate a bloodstone?"

"No. I mean, I guess you could deactivate it by using it to heal someone, but I think you might lose your powers if you did that, since the magic would be spent totally on whoever you were trying to save. You can't destroy it physically? I'm sure you've tried, but..."

"...But every time I chip a piece of it off, a larger chunk grows back. As you said, it's like a living thing. It heals."

"I don't know, then. It's a mystery." Concluded Ezreal. The two shared a prolonged span of wordless pondering, neither looking at the other. The information Ezreal had given him was more than Vlad had been expecting, even taking into consideration how much of it was purely theoretical. It was the hemomancer who spoke up first, peering at his guest with a warm, if slightly challenging smile.

"You like mysteries, don't you, Ezreal? You like solving them." Clearly knowing what Vlad meant, Ezreal looked at him with a mixture of fascination and worry.

"Yeah, I do."


	4. Present Passive

**AN:** Thank you again to my reviewers. I apologize for the delay in publishing this. My schedule for the rest of this month and the next is going to be busier than usual, so the next update might be late also, but I'll do what I can. All corrections to this chapter and the last will be made ASAP!

* * *

After all the things Vlad had taken out of Ezreal's backpack were gathered and safely returned to the bag, the hemomancer had requested Ezreal's company in the living quarters of the tomb, which sounded shifty enough on it's own even without Ezreal being reminded of the bodice-ripper romance novels Caitlyn pretended not to read back home. The stories in those trashy novels were always the same: they started with some tall, dark, handsome, sexist male character requesting the presence of his maiden captive in his chambers; then they ended with wild ravishment. Well, a maiden Ezreal was not, and there would definitely be no ravishment, wild or otherwise.

He let himself be led in the opposite direction of the bloodstone's resting place to a completely innocuous arch worn into the wall. The door occupying the crevice was laquered black, appearing like a shadow that swung open into the hall. Already he was burning to ask questions about the architecture, but it didn't seem entirely likely that Vlad knew or cared about the place where he lived from an archaeological standpoint. Ezreal contented himself with looking around frantically, trying to take in every room they passed through quickly. Once, he caught Vladimir looking back at him with a smile of amusement- it looked like amusement, anyway.

They passed through what looked like an ancient surgery theatre that Ezreal guessed had been used for either rituals or embalming (or maybe both) into a long chamber where actual living quarters had been set up, much to Ezreal's surprise. The furniture was much older in this particular room, and before Vladimir could make any formal gesture of welcome Ezreal had hurried over to examine the carvings on the long table and it's many chairs. This had proved to be a mistake, but not a terrible one- just an annoying one that made Vlad clear his throat audibly to recall the explorer's attention. Feeling slightly embarrassed and remembering how many times Vlad had already told him that his manners were poor, Ezreal turned to face his host.

"This is where you'll be sleeping during your stay. Appropriate amounts of rest will be crucial for you." The hemomancer explained, gesturing towards a large, square bedframe with a number of smaller mattresses stacked into it. Ezreal raised an eyebrow. There were other frames in the room, all shoved into a corner. Vlad must have taken the mattresses from all the little ones to reappropriate a new one for the large bedframe. That would have been funny to him if it didn't lead directly into the realization that Vladimir must've expected Ezreal to share a bed with him.

"Uh, not to be rude, but... that is, er, we're not going to be sharing the same bed, are we? I mean, there are all those other bedframes over there, I could just-" A dismissive noise from Vlad cut him off.

"What kind of host would I be if I let you sleep on one of those termite-eaten excuses for beds? I insist that you sleep in this grand- and I use grand very liberally in this case- bed. We will have no need of sharing the bed, before you came along I spent so much of my time asleep that all I want to do now is enjoy wakefulness to the fullest for as long as I am able, which may very well be days. I am sure that when I feel like sleeping, you will want nothing more than to be wide awake." Vlad offered a winning, disturbingly fanged smile that Ezreal returned sheepishly. He was absolutely sure that if Vlad was correct. If Vladimir climbed into the bed he would want to be as far away from it as possible.

"Alright. Thanks." Stilted words, but Ezreal had already realized that it was in his best interests to suck up to Vladimir if he wanted the hemomancer to hold his temper. Being polite whether he needed to or not was a survival strategy. Ezreal jumped when Vlad placed a hand on his shoulder to usher him along around a corner to show him to an alcove containing a latrine. The explorer's discomfort soared to new heights suddenly. There was neither toilet paper nor any other kind of partition to hide him if Vlad decided to take a stroll while nature called.

"I know you have more bodily functions than I do, so there is the-"

Unafraid for his own safety, Ezreal cut him off. "Right, okay, thanks. I'll just use that when I need to, thank you for showing me." Vlad audibly snickered at him. The bastard found his squirming funny. With the hemomancer standing at his back, Ezreal took the opportunity to glare in Vlad's general direction without offending him. When Vladimir brought him back into the room with the table and shuffled him towards a chest against the wall, Ezreal couldn't help but wonder if Vlad was going to complain about his dress sense too and commence the creepiest game of dress up ever.

Just when Ezreal thought nothing could be worse than that, Vladimir proved him wrong. The chest was full of food. Not rotten food, or even disgusting food, just simple, packaged, non-perishable food like the kind Ezreal was carrying. It was stacked up inside the chest, packing the whole thing full, and Ezreal could only wonder with dread how many dead explorers Vlad had looted for it. "When you run out of provisions, there's plenty more for you to eat here." The hemomancer explained cheerfully. Vlad obviously had no idea why his young guest might be stupified by the sight of food, but on the assumption that he was hungry, Ezreal was herded gently back to the table.

The hand on his shoulder now pressed him forcefully towards a chair, which was "helpfully" pulled out for him and pushed back in once he was seated. Another can was set in front of him, this one full of fruit. "Eating will also be important, you know, so don't skimp at mealtime. I will personally be making sure that you eat three times a day." At that moment, Vlad began to sound more like a fussing nanny than a bloodsucking lunatic. What was this, some kind of babysitting programme? Ezreal stopped rummaging in his pockets for his army knife to turn in his chair and frown at the man standing behind him.

"Wait, what?" Ezreal couldn't come up with a more verbose question. It was one weird thing right after another with Vlad, and it was getting to be a little overwhelming. "Why?" Vladimir circled around to sit opposite him. Just then, Ezreal decided that the table was far too narrow, but there wasn't much he could do.

"We have to keep your blood count up, you know." Ezreal's stomach dropped, weighed down by fresh horror. He had hoped that the blood sucking was a one-off thing that wouldn't see a repeat performance. At that moment he realized that he should have known better. His hand flew to his neck to find the wound Vlad had left bandaged already, a gauze pad secured over the bite mark. So they would both be playing host: Vlad to a guest, and Ezreal to a humanoid parasite. "Now, now. Don't fret. I won't be feeding on you every single day. You would run out of spaces for me to bite." Vlad smirked. Ezreal felt the hemomancer's eyes move over him, neck and chest. "Every other day, if I am very hungry, but you are safe from more constant attentions."

Ezreal's hand found the army knife. It didn't comfort him that the only feasible weapon he had against Vlad for the moment was currently being used to open a can of fruit. It was also good for opening bottles, sawing through various things, snipping, clipping, and slicing... but not vampire slaying. Ezreal glumly slurped the juice in the can, averting his eyes from the gleaming red ones affixed to him. Vlad made a disapproving noise at the slurping, and without thinking, Ezreal stopped and sipped more silently. When the explorer looked back to his host he found himself staring into a fanged smile. "What?"

"Oh, nothing." Lilted Vladimir. "Only that you learn so very quickly, without much prompting." The uncomprehending furrow of Ezreal's brow made him laugh. "I didn't even have to speak to make you stop slurping."

"Oh." Ezreal's face smoothed out, and he glanced away again, now picking the peaches out of the can and eating them one by one. They weren't that good, but the explorer always expected canned food to be tolerable rather than tasty. It made him appreciate real, fresh food far more when he came back from his adventures. The silence dragged on until he was on the verge of squirming. Vlad was just watching him, _staring,_ smiling personably. Creepy didn't even begin to cover it. "So, is it alright with you if I go around examining more of the carvings on the walls and furniture?"

To his surprise, Vlad's response was immediately positive. "Of course. I will be supervising you when you wander outside of this room, but you are welcome to your archaeological pastimes."

"Thanks." Ezreal actually meant it this time.

"There is, however, one condition." The hemomancer amended. Fortunately, he left no room for apprehension. "Tell me what more you deduce about the hemomancers who lived here, once."

"You mean you aren't one of them?"

"No indeed. They were apparently a bit before my time. My former master never told me anything about them. Perhaps even he knew nothing, as I have no residual memories of them from his blood."

"Hmm. I'll see what I can get out of the carvings. You can't read any of the weird writing on the walls either, can you?"

"Not a word."

"Then it's lucky that pictures are worth a thousand words." Then, stricken by a sudden revelation, Ezreal tilted his head at the hemomancer. "Wait, you've never looked at the carvings yourself all this time?"

Vlad chuckled. "I have. I know what they depict, certainly, but the story they tell is lost on me. They're all out of order, you see, as if they were carved in as needed, like pages written into a book. With there being so many of them, I cannot hope to piece them together in a logical progression without the help of tools such as you have: charcoal and paper. As you can likely guess, I have not had access to either in some time."

"I hope I have enough of both." Ezreal grinned. He was more than up to the challenge the tomb's disjointed carvings presented to him, and would have started after them if not for the realization that he was trying to pick fruit from an empty can. He looked blankly at his hand, sticky from the fruit juice, and Vladimir laughed at him again.

"You look lost. Do you need to wash your hand?" Vlad stood and pulled out Ezreal's chair for him.

"You have a water source?" Asked the explorer, looking around for it.

"Of course. It isn't plumbing such as you would find in civilization, but water trickles through some of the walls and collects in basins carved specifically to catch the flow." With a hand on his shoulder, Vlad led Ezreal back into the surgery theatre to point out one such basin. Looking down, Ezreal noticed that a sluggish trickle of water ran through the grooves in the floor, also.

"Probably to sluice away blood." Ezreal muttered aloud, finding himself too exhausted to really feel horror at the thought anymore. Vlad made an affirmative noise and didn't offer more than that. Ezreal washed his hands and let himself be guided back towards the bed. Without any resistance he laid down. He'd slept so awfully earlier that sleeping in a real bed was a welcome change. Ezreal was only vaguely aware of Vlad easing the boots off his feet and put up a sleepy token protest, but before long he was out cold.

**/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/\\/**

It came as a complete surprise to Ezreal that, for the most part, Vladimir didn't harass him in any direct sense. Sure, the creep followed him around constantly as he wandered the catacomb, always watching him with a stare so fixed that Ezreal could _feel_ it, but it could have been worse. Ezreal had expected it to be worse after waking up to Vlad touching him. It hadn't been a sexual touch, but for all he knew, Vladimir had thought of it that way. Any touch at all from a freaky, temperamental not-vampire was entirely unwelcome. By now Ezreal was at least comfortable in the assumption that his host was completely out of his mind, and that he would have to tread very lightly if he wanted out of here in one piece.

His waking hours were spent making rubbings of the carvings on the walls. Vlad had been right, they didn't progress chronologically, but there was enough separation between them that Ezreal could tell where one began and another ended. The explorer's portfolio became bloated with paper within the course of a few hours, no matter how neatly he folded them they just accumulated into fat piles. To preserve his charcoal he often switched to sketching the less elaborate carvings in miniature on the pages of his journal with pencil. Vlad leaned over his shoulder to glance at these sketches, but he never commented. Ezreal couldn't help the concern he felt over Vladimir's opinion of his art. He thought he was a pretty good artist, but Vlad seemed like the type who would have stood around in art galleries appreciating the classic works of masters.

The only time when Vladimir spoke was at meal time. Following lunch, Ezreal expected the narrow hand that settled on his shoulder once again to gently direct him away from his work as it had done hours before. "Time to eat, Ezreal." The announcement was the same as it had been during lunch, too. Being seated like an honored guest and served a fabulous meal of canned meat and vegetables was going to become a routine, Ezreal supposed, but it was never going to get any less weird.

"How is your research coming along?" Vlad questioned as he sat himself opposite Ezreal and steepled his fingers on the tabletop. At some point after offering Ezreal "breakfast," Vladimir had procured a wooden spoon from a drawer of miscellany on the far side of the room. What hemomancers might need with a spoon was a mystery to Ezreal. He hoped it hadn't been in anybody's innards or eye sockets at any point. Nonetheless, that spoon was now being used awkwardly to pick up things that really weren't made to be spooned, like spinach and some sort of vile canned meat block.

"Alright," Ezreal said between bites. Vladimir was a stickler for table manners that Ezreal didn't spend enough time around people to regularly observe. On the list of things that offended Vlad were talking with one's mouth full, elbows on the tabletop, slurping, and chewing too loudly. Ezreal had already begun to miss the relaxed lunches he occasionally had with Jayce and Vi back home. They'd just talk about the latest advances in hextech they were using for their individual hobbies; belching was allowed, and the manners didn't matter. "Everything I'm finding is pretty sinister, but I expected that. I haven't really gotten a full story on paper yet, but I've been taking note of recurring themes in the murals. Not that I need to tell you that."

"Yes, I've been watching you sketch. You're a fair artist, pretty boy."

Once again, Ezreal couldn't help the rush of pride that invaded him at the compliment. He stopped eating and looked up from his food to meet Vlad's unwavering gaze briefly. "Thank you. I've had a lot of practice." After that it was back to the food. "Anyway, I need to review what I have so I can start piecing together the-"

"No. No more work for today." The hemomancer commanded. Ezreal once again looked up at his host, concerned with the gravity he found in Vladimir's pale face. "You need to rest a little while. I'm hungry again, you understand, and bloodloss will hinder any further progress." Ezreal visibly tensed, prompting Vladimir to try and reassure him. "I promise that you won't need to endure any such thing tomorrow. You will be welcome to your own devices for as long as you like."

"That doesn't do much to comfort me, to be honest." Ezreal admitted. "You're still gonna bite my neck and suck my blood. Knowing that you'll leave me alone tomorrow doesn't change the fact that you're planning to snack on me."

"Please, Ezreal, try not to get your blood up over it." Thus followed the longest silence the two had ever sat through between speaking to one another. Ezreal stared at Vlad in bewilderment, unable to believe he'd made such a joke in the face of what was obviously very real concern over what lay ahead. Vladimir, in turn, offered nothing in the way of remorse. He stared back, straight faced, as though he hadn't said anything at all. Silence was typical between them, and it was always tense.

But before long, Vlad's lips twitched. There was a slow progression into smiling, and from behind that smile came a laugh that increased in volume from a chuckle to out-and-out laughter. "I'm sorry, Ezreal, but you ought to see your pretty face." The hemomancer managed to say. "That was an off-color joke, please forgive me. I thought it might make you laugh, but I see it has only served to amuse me." Ezreal said nothing. Anything he had to say to the lunatic in the chair across from him would have warranted another outburst. Instead, he frowned and waited impatiently for Vladimir to be finished.

"Really, though," Vladimir went on breathlessly upon regaining a small amount of composure. "Please relax. You'll do yourself more harm than good if you're tense."

"How can I relax? Seriously, I would love to know how you expect me to relax knowing that at any moment you're going to attack me and turn me into your personal juice box." The explorer's exasperation was clear in his voice.

"What an odd analogy." Vlad commented brightly, to Ezreal's annoyance. By now the hemomancer was at least paying attention, as he immediately realized his mistake. More delicately, he asked "Is there anything you do to calm down in unfamiliar places?"

Ezreal thought for a moment, trying to remember what he'd brought to amuse himself. "I read or play solitaire. It makes me sleepy when I'm having trouble dozing off."

"Solitaire? You have a deck of cards, then? Play a game with me. It has been an unbelievably long time since I've been able to do anything so... civilized. I might start to feel more like a man and less like an animal." Vladimir sounded so excited (in his own way) that it was hard for Ezreal to want to turn him down, even knowing that the card game was just a way of pacifying him and delaying the inevitable. The explorer went and got his worn deck of cards out of his backpack.

"What did you want to play?" Ezreal asked as he set the cards down on the tabletop.

"Rummy is simple enough. You know how to play rummy, don't you?"

"Yeah, though I haven't played in a while." Ezreal shuffled and dealt with deft hands put to practice in many games of poker with Vi and a handful of other Piltover officers predisposed to gambling.

"Do you keep up on current events, pretty boy?" Vlad asked as he arranged his hand of cards into a neat stack.

Ezreal was already learning to ignore the moniker. There was no use in getting riled over it, that wasn't going to stop Vlad consistently using the annoying nickname. "I do. Why, you want the news?"

"Yes. Tell me the news of Valoran in the last few years, as far as you know it."

In the course of a game, Ezreal laid out the major events of the past few years. There was the Kalamanda conspiracy that had Demacia and Noxus at each other's throats in violation of armistice, then the upheaval in Noxus prior to Jericho Swain's ascent to power. Jinx's attack on Piltover was more than worth mentioning, and Zaun's open alliance with Noxus still had everybody on edge. There had been an outbreak of illness at the Institute of War. The piracy going on along the eastern coast hadn't been dealt with, and the city-states of Noxus and Demacia were still hashing out an uneasy truce despite goings-on in the Freljord. Ezreal found himself laughing while describing Garen Crownguard's defense of the Noxian assassin Katarina Du Couteau, saying that the peace negotiations might go a bit faster if the two would just admit their feelings rather than playing at idiotic grudges. "I blame Katarina," Ezreal half-joked, "Noxians have to pretend to be heartless, even when someone's panting after them like a happy puppy."

Vladimir smiled indulgently, already dealing out another hand before Ezreal realized the game was over. Due to Ezreal's lack of investment in playing the game, Vlad had won. "I'm from Noxus, you know." It didn't surprise Ezreal to learn so. Only Noxus could produce the kind of person who would enjoy being a bloodsucking monster.

"Is that so?" The explorer responded politely despite his opinion. Vlad seemed to like the sound of his own voice. Prompting him to talk was a surefire way of keeping him occupied.

"Oh, yes. I was the only son of an upper-class Noxian family. My parents were associated with the Du Couteau family you mentioned. I was probably going to be married into said family myself when I was old enough."

"Sounds comfortable. Why did you leave?"

"I killed two of my playmates when I was fourteen." Vlad said it as casually as he might have commented on the weather. Ezreal bristled. "The crime never would have gone unnoticed. They were from similarly rich families. I ran away."

"Oh." The rest of the game played out in silence. For a while, Ezreal had actually been having a good time. The nonchalant mention of murdering two people tended to dampen any mood. On the other hand, Ezreal did win the game that time around. He'd feared that Vladimir might be a sore loser, but the hemomancer did little more than lean back in his chair and sigh melodramatically.

"Ah, I lost. Well played, pretty boy." Vlad smiled at him, inspiring just enough ease for Ezreal to return it. The hemomancer stood up, which Ezreal took to mean that dinner was over. His chair was pulled out, but when he stood up Vlad stepped into his path. In the course of half an hour, the explorer had ignored the mention of Vladimir's hunger. They'd taken so long that Ezreal hadn't thought there would be any follow-up. Now, with the hemomancer standing head and shoulders above him, keeping him boxed in with the backs of his thighs pressed to the table, Ezreal's worries reignited. "You seem much calmer than before. Please excuse the obstruction, but I like to take my meals at the table, too."

"Wait!" Was all Ezreal managed to stammer out before he was on his back. The normally light hand on his shoulder had shoved him onto the tabletop and held him down. One look at Vladimir's face told him that the polite, congenial man was gone, overtaken by something wild and unreasoning. The hemomancer's weight descended upon him, the strength of the hand on his shoulder replaced by Vlad's body pressing against him. A thigh nudged his legs open, and Ezreal hoped against hope then that blood was all Vladimir wanted. Hot breath on his neck made his hair stand on end, goosebumps rose where each short exhalation broke on his skin. Ezreal screwed his eyes shut and waited for the pain.

Even bracing for the bite didn't stop him from groaning in agony when the fangs broke his skin. A wave of nausea washed over him, brought on not only by pain but by the greedy way Vlad feasted on him, panting and embracing him like a lover, arching against him. Lightheadedness only added to his problems, but he was grateful for the apparent approach of unconsciousness. It was only when he lay limp in Vladimir's arms that the whole experience stopped. He felt weightless when Vlad lifted him to put him in a bed that had never felt more comfortable. Ezreal didn't recognize the feeling of a wet cloth or the gauze pad being affixed to his neck opposite the one that Vlad had already treated the last bite with.

Finally, he slipped into sleep.


End file.
